Companies do not embrace open source for ethical reasons, but merely to gain competitive advantage, like increased market share.

When IBM embraced Linux, it had nothing to do with embracing open source as an ethical concern, it was based on how IBM makes money, but providing services to implement, enhance, and support software.

When you realize the Adobe’s competitor for this product type is Microsoft, you might realize that the decision lowers the bar for entry, increasing Adobe’s market, and as mentioned in the article, assures existing customers of market support.

If nothing else, the 90’s should have shown you that free products from companies, not true open source, are almost always tied to profits in other ways, be it advertising, payment for enhanced services, or customer acquisition.

If your criterion for rejecting a good deed is the profit motive, you might as well put a negative rating on every news story on this site. All kinds of companies do things for good PR or good practicality. So what? If it has a positive effect – which releasing software under a open license does – then it should be heralded.

The dotherighthing community doesn’t seem to care much about IP issues, which is a shame.

First, you assume I rejected the act, although I was correcting the common blindness to the real motive for open-source by corporations. It is not a good deed, but it is an attempt to win market share, beat Microsoft, increases revenues, etc.

Releasing under open source doesn’t necessarily have a positive effect. Open-source that is buggy, or is adopted easily but costs significantly more to support, or has more bugs and security risks, is not inherently better.

Open-source that is truly open-source is more laudable than open-source that is really for profit.